


Challenge and Consequence

by butimnotdeadyet



Series: R&P [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: A little bit of blood, Established Zukka, F/M, M/M, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Suki didn't mean to fall in love with fire lord hotpants but, but - Freeform, she did, whoops, zrb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25760536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butimnotdeadyet/pseuds/butimnotdeadyet
Summary: canon through original show, vaguely inspired by some post-canon material + fanon + whatever I say goesif you wanna read this without the first installment, go ahead, they're out of order anyway, might be hella confusing, who knowsMonths ago, Sokka told Suki that he was in love. With Zuko.Suki being the amazing, dedicated girlfriend that she is, tried her hardest only to fall woefully short . . . and more than a little in love herself.How foolish of her.
Relationships: Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Suki/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), Suki/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: R&P [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1864240
Comments: 16
Kudos: 181





	Challenge and Consequence

**Author's Note:**

> Part 2 of the series, though it takes place before R&P. 
> 
> Explores Suki's perspective of their changing dynamic.   
> Sukka is very much established and healthy and great. 
> 
> there was more that I was going to say here but now I've forgotten but I will add:   
> this was mostly written as an attempt to thank those of you commented on the last piece bc you guys kept me from going absolutely feral on a bunch of college administrators the other day, so, thanks!

Suki had never had any difficulty identifying the most influential moment of her life. She was sixteen, newly promoted to Commander of the Kyoshi Warriors, and had unknowingly ambushed the Avatar. 

The Avatar and two friends. 

One that looked her dead in the eye and challenged her worth as a warrior and leader.

That day led her to battle, to war, and refuge, and imprisonment. It taught her the value of a love that was so unencumbered by the rules of what should make a practical match that time and space seemed to have little effect. 

Sokka was easy to love, not because the love itself was without effort but because from that effort grew the most lovely bouquet, with a scent that hinted of passion and understanding and colors that teamed with devotion and reliance. 

They were young when they met and only slightly older when they met again, and again, and once more. The last time they left nothing to chance. They sat and they shared, nested in the fine silks of bed meant for some sir or lady of great standing, surrounded by shades of red that would drag them into the darkness of memory and fear if either one had allowed the other to fall without being there to soften the aching hurts, sipping masterfully crafted tea from fine cups that looked out-of-place, ridiculous, in their scarred and bruised and blistered hands. 

Where there had once been the love of children, a little clumsy and laughably shallow, grew the love of people who knew that they had seen, each day, the best that the other had to offer. And that they both only had to wait until the next day to have their expectations surpassed again. 

They were not always together. Not in the sense that many cultures deemed necessary for a recognized pairing. But they were young and always the last to go about things the conventional way. They had their own lives, their own choices to make. They wrote, and they flew, and they sailed to one another so that the days weeks months apart would not feel as empty as they might. 

When Sokka heard his calling to return South, Suki almost followed. 

But that was his journey. Their steadfastness was not reliant on crossing every threshold joined, but in knowing that when the time came and they were beside each other again, they would converge readily. 

Suki, in turn, went back to her home. She fostered strength and stability in that post-war reconstruction. But having seen all that she had, the island set so far apart from the rest that it had once felt like its own world, insulated from both the threat and promise of disruption, began to feel more like a place-between-places than a hearth of her own making. She left, again. To answer the call of a friend in need. 

And eventually, Sokka did as well. 

  
  
  
  
  


With Sokka, it had not felt like this. It had been playing pai sho against a master, intimidating, but both of them on the same side of the table, staring down an unknowable opponent. They had played on battlefields and around campfires. A controlled but hasty descent - or ascent, Suki had never quite determined which direction the vector was headed. There were missteps, of course, but nothing that couldn’t be undone and reworked to be better. 

That was not what she felt now. 

Instead, she felt like she was flung into the open and raging sea. 

Every islander knows that to challenge the ocean is to waste your last breath. 

But she supposed that was the difference between falling for an intended partner and suddenly finding herself standing in the wings with her heart gasping for recognition, acceptance, contention,  _ something _ . 

It was not in Suki’s nature to remain unbuoyed - bender or not, she found solid ground and crafted an unmoving stance, every time. But now it was as if her natural state was to be sucked beneath with every new wave. 

Waves that had started as a fond look in his eyes when he saw that she was there to greet him at breakfast. 

The waves that took her by surprise when they crossed steel and fought with the total faith that no harm would come.

Waves that started when he begged her to help him find some way to know what his people felt, to help them be heard. To challenge him when he wasn’t doing enough. 

A wave that hit with a force she couldn’t have anticipated when he told her of his proposal to host voices of other nations within his own, that it was only with familiarity that they could push past the contempt. 

And all the waves that came crashing down when he asked, time again, if she was pleased with what he had done. If there was more that he could be doing for everyone, anyone. If she could find the holes in arguments that he didn’t have to make until the next meeting or letter but _ needed  _ someone he trusted to pick apart his words and logic. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


A small part of Suki wondered, as she crashed through the doors of Sokka’s suite, if this was what it felt like for everyone else: the beating in her chest felt like it was bouncing between a dead-sprint and staggered, ever-rising march towards something that she could not fathom or contain. 

If she didn’t already know that nothing short of an herb-infused scrub could take off her facepaint, she would have believed that the sweat and other moisture that she refused to call tears running down her face would leave her as bare as she felt. 

She checked the mirror anyway. Still painted, still a guise of control. Her hands were clammy under her gloves.

Sokka’s rooms were still bare and red. 

Suki had heard some of the staff say that they had repurposed a sitting room and adjoined guest chamber to make the new ambassadorial quarters. In theory, the wing was to be lined with space for delegates, visiting and residential, to conduct business and rest as needed outside of professional engagements and appearances. In practice, Sokka was the first to accept an invitation. 

Suki would bet a year’s earnings that he had also been the only one to  _ receive _ such an offer. 

The night that Sokka had arrived to move into the palace from his temporary address in the city, they had stayed up late after the dinner of roast fowl and summer greens and drew up plans for redecorating. Sokka had packed up a home’s worth of watertribe pelts, weapons, wall hangings, and artifacts to make wherever he settled feel like a glimpse of polar life. The crates had sat in storage since mid-winter and it was only Zuko’s plea for deferral the next morning that kept them from outfitting the space to the rafters. Sokka had taken it in stride, masking the disappointment she could see in the way that his tapping finger stilled on his goblet honeymilk. 

Suki had thought, from that moment months ago until just before her heart started performing a chain of inversions as fast and as dizzying as Ty Lee showing off show a village girl, that Zuko had been concerned with preserving that state of the rooms. That he, maybe, didn’t see what it would mean for Sokka to have a place that felt familiar - an attempt to negate a thousand miles’ distance. 

And then His Royal Hotman himself had to turn to Suki with so little preface that she assumed he was going to ask about dinner plans or if the birchmyrtles by the gate had been fertilized - ginger stew, and yes, perhaps a little too much - and asked if she thought the walls in Sokka’s rooms would look better with white or gray trim. He had meant to ask Sokka at lunch, he went on, but trade negotiation had taken over and he was sorry that the paint samples had been delayed so long, it was just that very few retailers in the Western Chain stocked any shades of blue that were remotely appropriate and it was only last week that the colorist in Hing Wa only responded --

Oh, how ridiculous she had been. 

Of course Zuko - who fought for every inch of individualism he claimed - had not only approved of Sokka making the suite his own, but had gone so far as to commission anyone capable in making the room perfect. He had meant, surely, to make her partner feel as comfortable as possible and the delay had cost him more than a little inconvenience. 

She remembered him, days ago, saying to a room of people as she stood behind his left shoulder, that ‘all progress’ would have to wait until the Hing Wa shipment came in, dismissing harried-looking consultants with a wave and parting word. What they were working towards, she had not known or much cared and  _ he’d done it for Sokka. _

And that was all it had taken.

The waves crashed again and Suki lost her breath and all of her focus and she left Zuko standing at the door to his study with a whispered excuse of poor time management just like any dependable bodyguard would never. 

And now she stood, facing Sokka’s red walls, and couldn’t believe that she had been so caught unaware by the machinations of her own mind, temptations of her own contrarian heart. 

Suki peeled off her gear, leaving her in the paints and green silks that filled her throat with bile instead of the pride. She felt like an imitation of a better original. She turned and threw her shoes at the awful portrait of Zuko’s great-great-someone-pompous-or-another that hung on the dividing wall, watching over her with a spiteful scowl every time she visited Sokka. She struck with deadly accuracy before collapsing onto the deflated lump of fabric that the Fire Nation thought they could justifiably call a cushion, pulling her legs up to meet her chest.

She sunk her forehead down to her knees as the door to Sokka’s bedroom swung open. 

“Suki? What’s wrong?” He sat close, she could tell, balanced just on the edge of the sitting room couch. Not touching, yet. He read her well. 

“Do you”, the words tried their damndest to stick to cling to her vocal cords, stubborn, like they belonged there, “. . . remember what you told me last year?” 

If she had looked up, she knew she would have seen him blink in confusion. 

“Uh, about what? The giant kio tours?- oh, the new Lotus Initiative! Did it get turned down? I knew it was a long shot but-”

“No, Sokka. What you told me after your birthday celebration, about your feelings.” 

The muscle in her neck felt unprepared to bear weight, so instead she rolled her head to the side until she could peer out at him, hoping to gage his reactions.

Sokka, for the love of him, looked like he had been dropped into the bay off the pier. 

“You mean the, uh, the . . .  _ Zuko  _ thing.” He hesitated as he said it, as if Suki could possibly be alluding to anything else. For a man whose influence reined near-supreme around the nations for his objectivity and clearheadedness, he could make a mention of  _ feelings _ sound like a treasonous plot. 

But Suki held in her sigh - this was still new to him, she knew. Kyoshi Island was as unique as her namesake, and many of her citizens behaved in kind. It wasn’t until Suki was nearly an adult that she learned that marriage, gender roles, and stringent monogamy were implied - if not explicit - staples of the larger nations. And the Southern Watertribe, though numbered among the progressive cultures, was still figuring out just where they stood on using the basis of sex to determine a couple’s fitfulness. They had talked about their similarities and differences, expectations and limitations, many times in the past years.

When Sokka had come to her barrack on the heels of her observing his gravity-like attachment to Zuko during a party flooded with their mixed cultures, a little hapless and helpless, she had all but guessed his intention. Suki could see in his eyes that he had  _ still _ half expected her to brush him off or, worse, shame him. 

He was in love with another. 

She accepted this new fact about her love without a pause. 

That knowledge, months ago, started Suki’s unspoken, one-woman campaign to convince the Fire Lord that his Ambassador was ripe for the picking. It was never supposed to be about her desires, or her own feelings outside that of her want to make Sokka happy. But the challenge had been too great, because while she had been successful on many fronts-

(Zuko had assigned Sokka a place in his roster of advisors at her depiction of wanting to see her lover more, had made him Ambassador with a few more words to praise his accolades in the South and offered him a place to stay, had gone traveling with him, alone, after her prodding.)

-she was wholly unprepared for what it would cost her. 

Suki was far from a practice puppeteer; usually, she fought for what she wanted. 

Usually, she won. 

This did not feel like winning. 

“Yes, that.”

“Then, yeah, I remember. Why?”

He was aiming for casual, but she hadn’t heard his voice crack so badly since they were still teens in a tent trying to figure out what went where. It made her want to laugh but it came out a quiet huff of breath. 

“You know I love you, right? Because I do. Like, I don’t think I would be physically capable of stopping being in love with you.” She wondered if he noticed that she fairly well repeated his own words back to him, paraphrase or not. 

He had . . . rambled a bit last autumn. But coming out wasn’t easy even if it was to your awesome, gorgeous, loving girlfriend. 

(His words, again. She had just memorized the way they sounded, etching them deep.)

“Yes. I love you, too.” 

And there was her answer, syllable for syllable. If her throat wasn’t still sticking, she’d call him a sap. But she couldn’t, so she just smiled, and the pinched in his brow said that she had only unsettled him farther.

“Suki, what’s going on? Is, is it Kazue?”

Kazue, her lieutenant for over half the time that she’d been in the Fire Nation, her dearest friend and most trusted warrior. Suki had trained her from the start. She was the one left to protect Zuko after Suki had fled. She did not love Kazue, but it was sweet of him to ask. 

She may have to ask him about it later. 

“No. Nothing to do with the Guard or the Warriors.” She meant to put him at ease, but as soon as she spoke a dozen scenarios occurred to her at once. Some influenced by the past -falling airships and burning flames, blades thrown through darkness - and not a single one good. 

“Okay, then-” Sokka started while her failings and shortcomings moved like a production in her mind, bodies of the men she loved falling lifelessly because she had been to - to  _ distracted-  _

“Wait, that’s not true,” because it wasn’t, this  _ would  _ affect them - in ways that Suki couldn’t begin to make peace with, “I am unreliable.”

“You’re -- what?”

“I can’t do my job, Sokka. He’s right there and I don’t know how you manage it every day. With him just . . . there.” 

It fell to her, before anyone else, to protect him - to protect them both, since Sokka’s return - and she had already proven that this feeling, this unkempt need, could tear her away in a moment and-

“Suki.”

“I didn’t mean to - I hadn’t noticed in all the time that I had been here before you returned, but now I think it was within me for longer than I knew. And it’s so  _ much  _ now. I just wanted to help you, I just --”

“Suki, it's alright. I’m not -- do you think I’m mad? Because, I’m not.” He was on his knees, now - though she could not tell by sight, her view obscured by saltwater,  _ waves _ , again - pulling her towards him until she rested against his chest and he could wrap both his arms around her. A small part of her had worried, yes. Small but loud. 

“You gave me so much . . .  _ grace _ when I told you. I would be the world’s biggest hypocrite if I didn’t return it in kind and . . . we’ve talked about this.” Sokka hugged her like he had each time when he landed at port while they were separated, a little desperate and so glad in their reunion, tucking her beneath his chin. 

“The ‘liking other people’ thing isn’t a dealbreaker here, Suki.”

“I know.”

She did. But idea was different from experience and Suki, since they met nearing eight years ago, had never  _ wanted _ more than Sokka, or more besides him. She would have laughed if she could; she did this to herself. 

“Can you tell me? You don’t have to but I think, maybe, you might want to.”

“It’s  _ him _ , Sokka. I thought I was just getting -- getting closer to help you get what you wanted but then I looked up and realized that I was in just as deep as you.” She had to squeeze her eyes shut then, letting the tears - fine, yes, the tears - fall so she could look and see him again, features and red walls unblurred. 

“I’m just not handling it as well.”

She saw when the words hit their mark.

“So, Zuko?” 

Suki turned her face in towards his throat, nodding, confirming. If it weren't significantly past operative hours, she would be concerned about mussing his collar.

“Huh, well, first of all, that’s a lie: I cried myself to sleep every night you weren’t here for a month after Zuko tagged along for my hunting trip over the Summer. I was a wreck and you are far, far prettier when you cry than me.”

That earned a snort that may have been a juvenile laugh. 

“It’s true! I get those stupid splotches on my faces and I look  _ sickly, _ you can admit it.”

“It's the makeup.” A thick layer of paint covered a lot of flaws.

“No, I've cried wearing your makeup, too, that stuff did  _ not _ want to come off. Still not cute. The point is that we are both pretty bad at this, but we’re pretty  _ great _ at our jobs, so we’ll keep doing both and hope it balances out.” 

She found herself agreeing, with the promise that he would hold her accountable. 

He swore he would.

“Secondly, I’d really like to know what you meant by ‘wanting to help me’? Because if you actually  _ were  _ plotting behind my back to get Zuko to love me, I own Toph ten gold pieces.”

“About that . . .” and she told him of her planning, purposeful and coincidental outcomes alike.

And because it wasn’t fair to stop there, she went on to talk about how she watched Zuko wage battle, repeatedly, daily, against the challenge of war-hungry generals and the impudent governors. How she’d helped him late into the night and early morning as he tortured himself over the phasing and perspective of the new intermediate-level curriculum. About when he’d been the one to tell her, with blood still running from a wound deep enough to need sutures, that one of her Guard - Shigeo, a new graduate, making his first rounds - had taken a blade through his shoulder during an attempt on Zuko’s life. 

(He had stood there, prepared to calm her of worry for her brother-in-arms who was resting safely in the infirmary, with an injury of his own that would have lain lesser warriors out. She had felt her heart against her ribcage and misinterpreted it as anxiety. She was a fool.) 

“So, you’ve been busy.” 

It was a better response than she had feared for but nothing less than what she should have expected from her love.

“And I think all I’ve accomplished was foolishly falling in love with him myself.”

“I suppose we can be fools together, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> I cut a little bit about Suki's machinations because i think they'll fit better in the Sokka part of the story -- whenever it arrives. 
> 
> This take on Suki basically has her being very open to the idea of something (poly) but when it gets down to it she realizes that she's only ever been in one relationship and that one is perfect for her and her partner and she doesn't want to mess it up and Zuko was supposed to be Sokka's and now she's screwed it up and she knows how important boundaries and communication are in open relationships and what does it mean that she can only mimic greatness and oh wait sokka loves her unconditionally and so they'll just have to be unlucky in love together.   
> I LOVE these idiots and how much they love each other. And how much they love Zuko and he loves them and don't worry its getting there. 
> 
> I have so rarely written from a woman's perspective (which is stupid bc - i am that) and the addition of the upped drama meant that this took about three times as long as R&P. whatever. 
> 
> ask questions, share opinions, point out my flaws as a writer and human being, make small talk in the comments.


End file.
